Selecting only the first few characters in a string C++

Question

I want to select the first 8 characters of a string using C++. Right now I create a temporary string which is 8 characters long, and fill it with the first 8 characters of anot

Answer 1

char* messageBefore = "12345678asdfg"
int length = strlen(messageBefore);
char* messageAfter = new char[length];

for(int index = 0; index < length; index++)
{
    char beforeLetter = messageBefore[index];
    // 48 is the char code for 0 and 
    if(beforeLetter >= 48 && beforeLetter <= 57)
    {
        messageAfter[index] = beforeLetter;
    }
    else
    {
        messageAfter[index] = ' ';
    }
}

This will create a character array of the proper size and transfer over every numeric character (0-9) and replace non-numerics with spaces. This sounds like what you're looking for.

Given what other people have interpreted based on your question, you can easily modify the above approach to give you a resulting string that only contains the numeric portion.

Something like:

int length = strlen(messageBefore);
int numericLength = 0;
while(numericLength < length &&
      messageBefore[numericLength] >= 48 &&
      messageBefore[numericLength] <= 57)
{
    numericLength++;
}

Then use numericLength in the previous logic in place of length and you'll get the first bunch of numeric characters.

Hope this helps!